The challenges of mail delivery within the United States and in the growing ranks of industrialized countries has grown so that, in the United States alone, the postal service delivers approximately 600 million pieces of mail per day. To the growing postal burden is added the requirements of keeping address data accurate in the face of a growing social mobility. To promote operating efficiency, the United States Postal Service (U.S.P.S.) has offered discounts for the use of 5 digit zip codes, bar codes, delivery point bar coding, and various forms of address coding such as those used on the Optional Endorsement Line of printed address blocks.
The most common form of coding is directed to the postal zip code. The basic elements of a postal zip code consist of four parts; these are: (i) the xe2x80x9czip code,xe2x80x9d which consists of 5 digits and refers to geographic area or zone; (ii) the xe2x80x9czip plus 4xe2x80x9d further breaks down a zip code region into smaller sub-regions, this consists of four digits added to the base zip code; (iii) xe2x80x9cdelivery point digitsxe2x80x9d which consist of two additional digits that further break down a zip plus 4 so that the U.S.P.S. can more accurately pin point an exact location; and, (iv) a check sum digit. The delivery point digits are extracted from the street line of the address using a U.S.P.S. approved algorithm.
But, the best coding systems available are of little use if the intended recipient is no longer at the address that has been coded. Of particular concern to the U.S.P.S. is the relatively high amount of mail that is undeliverable because the intended recipient has moved and not left a forwarding address.
With the need to reduce costs while improving the efficiency and reliability of its operations, continuous review of methodology and the systems used to implement operations is continuously required. Review by the U.S.P.S. has led to a series of sweeping changes that are to be implemented in a series of changes grouped together under the banner of xe2x80x9cPostal Reclassification.xe2x80x9d The first such change occurred on Jul. 1, 1996; the second on Jan. 1, 1997. The new standards under Postal Reclassification will enable the U.S.P.S. to improve efficiency and remain competitive by reducing the amount of work effort required to deliver mail.
The change of Jan. 1, 1997 includes standards for a series of move updates that effect address databases. Among the standards are: a National Change of Address (NCOA); U.S.P.S. Address Correction Requested (ACR); USPS Forwarding and Address Correction Requested; USPS Address Change Service; and, access to USPS FASTforward technology.
Under the new standards, companies are required to show that they are implementing a process to track a customer""s change of address. The U.S.P.S. requires that companies implement the change of address process against customer information files at least once every six months in order to continue receiving postal discounts for First-Class mail. In addition to maintaining discounts when utilizing certain U.S.P.S. services, companies will be able to add efficiencies by improving their customer satisfaction, reducing postage expenses, and reducing returned mail and rework costs.
One of the initiatives of the U.S.P.S., designed to improve the levels of address quality in corporate mailings, has been the development of FASTforward which has evolved from work between the U.S.P.S. and vendors of commercial multi-line optical character readers (MLOCRs). The apparent goal of the U.S.P.S. is to have MLOCR solutions incorporate FASTforward technology to help identify customer change of address information.
FASTforward identifies and reads address data from the mailpieces introduced to the system, as well as the ZIP+4 coding, to determine if a change of address notification or forwarding order exists for a given addressee. If a change of address notification or forwarding order is found, then FASTforward has the capability for correcting the destination address on the mailpiece.
For those industry vendors developing systems for the mailing and/or addressing market, the U.S.P.S. has promulgated the FASTforward specification and requirements in order to promote uniformity and compatibility in interfacing the vendor product with the U.S.P.S. system. Vendors are responsible for design of the required interface systems. Thus, unique approaches are required for interfacing mailing and address systems with FASTforward in order to provide seamless service for customers.
One approach to designing an interface system for FASTforward is to create a client-server environment that provides privacy as well as control of customer data that is provided to FASTforward as well as obtained from it.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a client-server interface and environment that provides privacy as well as control of customer data when interfacing with the U.S.P.S. FASTforward system. It is a further object of the present invention to utilize change of address information provided by the FASTforward system to return a new address and related data to the customer""s mailing and/or addressing system and to include a graphical user interface (GUI) for easy task establishment and monitoring of the task execution.
The invention overcomes the shortcomings and limitations of the prior art and satisfies the intended objectives through a method and system of updating address data representative of a changed address. The method is accomplished by initiating an address data request at a data processing system (client).
The address data request is for an update of individual address records contained in the database serviced by the data processing system. The request is transmitted from the client to an application host system such as ForwardTrak. The address data request is translated at the application host system into a format readable by a master system comprising change of address files. In order for the translated request to be transmitted from the application host system to the master system, there must be created an interface that allows passage of the translated address data request from the application host system to master system so that said translated address data request can be read and responded to by the master system.
The interface is created during the method""s translation step. The translation step comprises a number of further steps that begin with creating a data map of the data representative of the address data request. The created data map is compared against a second set of data representative of a mailing list correction (MLC) scheme, or a multi-line optical character reader (MLOCR) scheme. The comparison establishes a second data map which is representative of the address request in either the MLC or the MLOCR scheme. The second data map is then transmitted via a SCSI interface to the master system for processing of the address request.
The master system, such as the U.S.P.S. FastForward system, matches the address data request to records of address changes that are resident in an address database operatively connected to the master system. After matching the address data request against the change of address database, the method and system determine whether a match exists between the address data request and any address record resident on the address database. If a match occurs, then a record of the match is placed into an address data reply. The reply is then transmitted back to the application host system.
When a reply is received from the master system, whether that reply is positive (a match occurred) or negative (no match found), the reply is translated into a format capable of being read by the client data processing system. The translated reply is then transmitted back to the client for use in updating address files operatively accessible by the client data processing system.
The address files are updated by entering a new address extracted from the reply format if the result of the address record request was positive; that is, that a match occurred between the request and the master system""s change of address file.
The system is capable of printing one or more reports. The reports are based on the transactions between the application data processor and the master system, and representative of the requests, replies, and/or statistics arising from the transactions.